Masons Have Played Prominent Roles In The Presbyterian Church

This section must be prefaced by saying that the United Presbyterian church is very close to Freemasonry. There are more United Presbyterians than all the other 7 major Presbyterian denominations put together. There is in excess of 2 million American United Presbyterians in 9,000 churches. In contrast, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church had only 16,590 members in the 1982 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches and the Presbyterian Church of North America was listed having but 4,878.5

The small Reformed Church finally took an official stand against Freemasonry in 1942. The one Presbyterian denomination prior to that time that took a clear stand against Freemasonry was the Associate Presbyterian Church which following the 1757 Secession tradition had forbidden Masonic membership.

In writing this part concerning the Presbyterians, I have taken the liberty to lump the various groups together in the same section—however, they can in no way be lumped together in their response to Freemasonry and the One-World-Power.

Examples of Presbyterian Masons working on the functional church level are Robert W. Cretney (33°, deacon Presbyterian church), Morton P. Steyer (KT, 32°, Shriner, York Rite College, Royal Order of Scotland, and elder Presbyterian Church), and Hugh I. Evans (33°, KT, National Head of the Presbyterian Church, USA.)

33rd degree Mason Hugh I. Evans (1887-1958) deserves some note here. He represented the U.S. at the meeting of the World Council of Churches in Holland in 1948. He was the National Head of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. in 1950-51. In 1955, he became the director of the Foundation of the Presbyterian Church at NYC. and he served for a while as the President of the Board of National Missions.

The Newsletter Free The Masons (Aug. 1990) says "On the other end of that, however, is the church on whose Board sit Lodge members, or whose Deacons or Elders share Masonic secrets. These secrets reflect their higher allegiance to the Lodge, and seem to produce an aloofness from the rest of the Church body. These are 'good' men who attend regularly and are often the financial backbone of many small congregations.

"One Pastor wrote of his frustration in a rural church. He put it this way, "As faithful as these men are, I always feel at board meetings that there is a second agenda which is not open to me. It's like they get their marching orders from the Lodge on how to conduct the business of the church. They are good men, but they seem to operate with some 'higher' knowledge than the rest of us. There is no submission to the authority of the church and its members." "

Sometimes Masonic literature shows its true colors almost to the point of being embarrasing. The book Standard Freemasonry states that Presbyterians are bad material [for the lodge] until they go against their church.6 The Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Oregon, 1870, p. 209 states that the world is a good place when the Presbyterian church shares its pulpit with a Jewish rabbi in Salem, OR.

The Alabama Grand Lodge reported in 1889 that out of its 7,950 Freemasons in the state 483 were Christian ministers.7 The New York Grand Lodge report of 1890 gives us the breakdown of the 703 Christian clergymen that were N.Y. Masonic members: Methodist(288), Episcopalian(146), Baptist(112), Presbyterian(59), Universalist(31), Congregationalist(21), Dutch Reformed(13), Christian(13), Lutheran(11), Jewish(7), Unitarian(l), Reform Jew(1).8

THE NEW AGE & THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES

The United Presbyterian Church put out a "Report on Occult and Psychic Activities" in 1976 that gave a positive report to various occult activities. It encourages the study of the occult "within the churches" (p.3). The medium Olga Worrall's book The Gift of Healing gets a favorable review. One of the seven on the task force that wrote up the report was Mrs. Margueritte Harmon Bro who was a medium and the cofounder of SFF.

Another example of the New Age in the Presbyterian church is Pastor H. Richard Neff, of the Christian Community Presbyterian Church of Bowie, Maryland. He authored the book Psychic Phenomena and Religion. He states in his book, "Occult practices...may be beneficial and helpful for many people." (p. 166)

Presbyterian Pastor Neff believes that only fraudulent mediums are bad, and he advocates mediumism for others. (cf. pp.166-7, 130-1, etc.)

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